GOTM #10 *Spoilers* Thread

[Phillip_martin]

If it wasn't for my informal "Lowest Scoring Victory Challenge" with Col, I would have trouble finishing this game.

I find it hard to concentrate on a game that I am certain to win (never make a good milker).

Waited for Cavalry after an initial land grab to take out the Aztecs, Russians (That I enjoyed and follows Cracker's first rule of domination) Iroquois, and to banish the Romans to far off islands.

Used Tanks to remove the German capital to another island and I am currently half way through the Americans.

I am now at the point that to keep my score down I will have to start abandoning cities and play out till 2050 with a tundra'd AI city . Col what have you done to me? Not only have I turned into a warmongering fool, this smacks of anti-anti-partial-psudo milking.

I wish I had taken refuge in Sulla's One City Challenge instead

 

[BCLG100]

im in the industrial ages at the moment i have destroyed the aztecs but there still alive probably with a floating settler the romans declareds war on me i had an mpp with the iroqoius who had one with germany the romans were dead in 3 turns they had about 20 cities. i am just getting ready to launch an attack on russia who have about 10 cities they have nationilism but no riflemen i have steampower at the moment i have about 40 cavalry and bout 10 cannons

 

[cracker]

Just finished the game.

Probably the wierdest game I have ever played. The last 5 turns were spent chasing another blasted respawn. Grrrr!

I am digging into the game a bit because the "Keep Everybody Fighting all the Time" tactic plus the "Buy Their Workers Everytime it is Possible" strategy just seems to absolutely incapacitate the AI's. I saw two enemy knights in the entire game and that was only because I made a stupid map reading error.

I spent about 30 turns between about 500BC and 10AD where the game was very unstable and would either spend about 5 or 10 minutes in some sort of thinking stupor or might crash black to the desktop. For most of this time all 7 opponents were alive and they were furious with each other. Almost every turn had one or two diplomacy pop ups or agreement transfers. I had to reload the game from the autosave after the black crashes and then not attack any of the enemy cities for the turn in order to keep it from crashing. It was as if teh game was saying "I can't take any more mindless violence, I think I'll just barf. " This just slowed me down. (I am in discussion with the Max Payne folks for a Civ3 spin off based on my experiences in this game even as we speak.)

I also killed every explorer that I met in the early game or in two cases I blocked the only routes of escape and let barbs or other enemies kill them. Left lots of huts just for me.

A built a warrior and then an archer, before switching to settlers, workers, temples, and then horsemen, horsemen, horsemen and more horsemen. I built temples only until got literature and then switche to libraries when the distance to the city was 12 or less. Frontier cities stuck to building the temple and I lloked for cites that could benefit from forestry. A city with a temple and a marketplace plus eight luxuries needs nothing else.

My game ending culture score was something like 7400 pts and this was still two to three times that of the AIs. They will not build cultural improvements when they are at war and as a result, their territory virtually will not knit together.

I then went through a period where no one would talk with me at all, even though I was careful not to break any agreements. Very wierd. Some of the AI's stayed at war with someone almost constantly.

In the end, they built almost no wonders and even fewer improvements in their cities.

I attacked the AIs in between their wars with each other while their units were staggering back and forth in the open. Its wierd that when A is fighting B, you can let B's army attack A while you attack and kill A''s offensive army and take B's cities. They will not always make peace with each other right away and in the meantime you have virtually disemboweled them both.

My original core area cities were virtually undefended for the entire game.

I had to rush a few galleys near the end and used some rushed cannons to blast and enemy galley from shore, but other than those wierd events I built no navy and no artillery.

 

[Kemal]

Contrary to cracker I was (trying to be) playing a peaceful-builder style type of game. The early phases of the game left me with mixed feelings because on the positive side the Aztecs were playing very poor and gave me the chance to settle all around our inland sea and even as far as right next to Tenochtitlan. However, on the downside the barbarians were a real pain to me in this game. The goody huts were not very favourable and I lost 2 settlers , 1 worker and some spearmen to the barbarians early on, somewhat inhibiting my early expansion. Having 6 turns of anarchy to turn to Republic and another 7 for Democracy also wasn't good.

Because I didn't have to spend much resources on my military i took a decent economical and technological lead over the AI only to find out after discovering steam power that there wasn't any coal in my territory. A scan of the map revealed a lump just outside my borders near the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan.
Considering that world peace is great but having a lump of coal even better it was quickly decided that the Aztecs were going down. Due to my technological superiority (cavalry vs spearman/pikeman) and the fact that the Aztecs only had about 7 cities it was a very short war, but during that war soem very unpleasant things occured: Since the Aztecs had always been polite with me and I couldn't see any method of them declaring war on me I was the agressor in this war. This immediately switched the other AI's opinion of me to annoyed and I guess it was because of this the stone-age-we-have-no-money-Aztecs managed to get an Alliance with the Russians against me just before I finished them, and to make matters worse a large stack of English knights suddenly appeared in my border indicating an English attack was also imminent. Although they were fighting with knight/musketmen at that time there was no way I could finish them before they got to cavalry/riflemen so a large war broke out.

So much for my peaceful game. I eventually dispatched both the Russians and the English using tanks but not after all the other civ's had also declared war on me. Could (and maybe should) have tought them all a lesson but I got tired of the war even faster than my own citizens so I finished with a spaceship.

Not a very high score in the end but probably good enough for another top 30 notation.

 

[Beard Rinker]

Cracker,

I almost feel sorry for the AI. You owned their ass, well bit bucket anyway.

I think a better strategy for the AI would be to flail about randomly as you appear to know what they are going to do before they do it.

 

[Frankenchrist]

Well, my first attempt at milking didn't go very well. Could hav had the game wrapped up in late 1400's, but it was the 3rd of the month and didn't want to be without a GOTM. was able to milk for about 400 years, but my culture was getting out of control. On my last turn before cultural victory I went and nuked some german cities and grabbed the ones I could reach for Domination victory in 1870. Guess I should've watched my cultural points more closely but I assumed milking would have been alot easier. Score wasn't too bad but it could have been alot better. see ya'll next month

 

[Smoking mirror]

Oh well, I lost; As usual it was due to a Diplomatic victory by my arch enemies.
I had been saving a Great leader that I had got in my last war for a rush build of the United nations, I had just built the Hoover dam and was getting ready to crush the Americans (I had just eliminated the Russians and I had Four elite tanks sitting outside the Roman capital, about to kill them too). I managed to get computers a little while after the american, but they were starting to get ahead of me in techs (I know most people seem to stay on 4turn techs through the whole game, but I was having trouble getting anything in less than 6-8 turns, too many tanks, not enough market places I guess, I cant wait for the PTW addition of the stock exchange- I can bulid it in my super cities and won't have to worry about building Marketplacess in Supercorrupt cities at the edge of my empire, most of them only pay for them selves in anything toher than Democracy, and ven in capitalism mode they only bring in a few extra coins). Any way I decided that I needed the Seti program and I could get another GL in my fight against the Americans (I had got four Great leaders, since I got tanks and the heroic epic, they seemed to be very common now, so the one sitting around in my capital doing notheing waiting for the right tech to build the UN seemed to be a waste of more potential leaders) so I rushed Seti and improved my science program, and was just about to wipe out the romans, when the Americans built the United Nations- "don't panic" I thought, the Germans love me and the English are fairly neutral, if I can just move my tank, I can wipe the Romans from the earth and then Capture the UN from Americans, but sadly the stupid romans voted for the Americans as did the English (The germans however stayed true to their eternal friends, the french, and voted for me!).

So despite the fact that I owned more than 50% of the whole world and I had five tank Armies and the pentagon and my Navy was unchalenged on the waves, as were my jetfighters in the air- the Americans managed to sway world opinion (the English and the size one city of roman pigfarmers on "Death island") And "defeat me". ( I think diplomatic victory is fairly weak, its nice that you can win with Diplomacy, but no one ever uses it, they just build the UN first and refuse to vote. I usualy turn it off in my games; I mean, how exactly was "World opinion" going to cause my downfall, would they institute a global trade embargo against me? Or perhaps Lincon could have made every one Declare war aginst me? All I can say to that is, "Bring it on!" I defeated them before, I can do it again- Personaly I prefered the old CivII UN, great wall was better back then as well- Also I miss the Iffel tower, Diplomacy is already a key part of the game, every eventuality of the "diplomatic victory" is already there; Trade embargos, MMPs, military alliances and even the ability to turn away peace envoys, now that would be a good function of the UN, to enable you to force aceptance of your Peace envoys, it would still be very diplomaticly expensive to rig "Zero turn wars", (lots of Goldperturn and Resources/techs) but it would be nice to have the option ).

 

[cracker]

Smoking mirror,

I hope you will grab a couple of save files from your game that are early in the industrial era if possible.

I think if we look at your save games after the closing submission date, we should be able to find a number of key things that you could do to improve your research rate and avoid the close losses.

On Regent level, there should be absolutely no wonders that you may want to build that you cannot almost always build if you use wise bootstrapping techniques.

 

[Smoking mirror]

I think my main problem was the poor location of my Palace/Forbiden palace- both close together at the north end of my empire, on oposite sides of the big lake- I should have used one of my GLs to rush build a new palace down south, but I was too caught up in trying to save one for the UN, and I had built most of the wonders of the industrial age, it was just a matter of time before the Americans or English caught up and built a wonder, just through slow building.

All in all missing the UN was a stupid mistake, I should have avoided with proper use of my Great leader- but having a GL sat around waiting for dozens of turns, just makes me so upset; Specaily as I was Running a Warmongering strategy that had been churning out GLs at a tremendous rate!

This is the last save game I had, A little while before I lost I think, I'm not sure If I had the Great leader at this point, Iv'e got a slow computer, so I tend to avoid auto saves and just save when Iv'e gone for a long time without- if the game crashes or the Electricity goes (we have a Key meter- if you don't top it up occasionaly you can find yourself suddenly in the dark), any way here it is;

 

[Kemal]

Since I have already completed and submitted this game I have taken a look at your game. What I immediately noticed is that your cities are very small. Though having specialist isn't very usefull except for score it is very important that your cities' population is large enough to make all the surrounding squares productive, especially in your core-cities which have little waste/corruption. Furthermore I noticed that most of your cities didn't have a factory. Usually when I reach Industrialization I make certain that my larger cities around my capitols get factories ASAP. (most are prebuilding the factories via colloseums or banks and I rushbuy in cities that still need other important improvements like a university or bank). In your case, having factories is even more important since you also possess the Hoover Dam which increases factory-output by 50&, making having one in your city even more lucrative). After these cities complete their factory they'll build a hospital and then other improvements that may still be needed (bank, university, or cathedrals).
By doing this I usually take a great lead over the AI since I am greatly outproducing them both industriously and economical.

Also, a granary helps out growing cities above size 6 greatly.

I'm not saying that this is the best way to manage/build your empire as many other strategies are also used by other gotm-players and I'm certainly not the highest scoring one, so maybe cracker or other players can help you in different (better) ways.

Anyways, hope this helps you a little to improve your skills for future gotm's.

 

[Zur]

3500BC Borders expand and we get pottery by absorbing goody hut.
3100BC Space sure is limited on standard with 8 civs. We meet Aztecs and get 2 techs for alphabet.
3050BC Up to now, I had never had a settler from a goody hut. Took cracker's advice and set the settler production to Granary before popping hut to east. Get settler! [dance] Meet Aztecs. Wanted to go for militaristic play in this game for a different style. Aztecs have Bronze Working although capital is defended by jaguar warrior.
Warrior gambit may be risky.
2950BC I think all my luck in goody huts concentrate in this game.
pottery, settler, mysticism, gold, warrior, barbs, map, barbs, barbs, warrior, barbs, horseback riding, barbs, maths, barbs, warrior, writing, warrior
2670BC We see Aztecs' first settler and send a warrior towards it. The settler runs back to the capital!
2630BC Russians only have a single city at size one at 2630BC?!
2390BC "You have disturbed an angry Goth warrior."
2030BC Aztecs are still at 1 city . We have no iron nearby! Decide to go for horsemen rush. Will wait for someone to research horseback riding and then trade for it using tech lead. Set science to 10% to save up for horsemen upgrades.
1950BC erm, we get horseback riding from a hut.
1650BC I see Aztec Regular jarguar with settler come next to our elite warrior.
"What you cannot defend does not belong to you." We attack!
1525BC We get writing and comms with English thro Americans. I have discovered everyone. Only the English are equal to our size. They must have got a settler from a goody hut too. 3 turns later, everyone gets contact with one another and we lose any advantage here.
Buy alliance with Russia against Aztecs. It's a bargain, spending only 40 gold. That will keep the jarguars off us,
slow down Russian growth, prevent dominos against us and pin Tenochitlan down for us to colonize incense.
1450BC Get free alliance with Rome against Aztecs (using ROP) and with Germany against Aztecs for Mysticism.
We then get peace treaty with Aztecs for a worker . Reputation drops a notch, but oh well...
ouch, our 3 ex-allies became furious.
1025BC Breaking the treaty definitely was a bad move. Not only will they not ally with us in future unless already at war, but we also can't sell ROPs for cash.
Got WM relatively early in the month this GOTM due to pangea.
950BC darn, our orchestrated wars are dying down. Time to stir up more! We get polytheism after 40 turns of 10% science and other civs have caught up with our science lead from huts, so we pump science up to 100% again until our war machine gets going since Aztecs (who we will attack) are behind in tech.
An iron pops up right under Rheims! We decide to attack Aztecs even though that would leave us incredibly weak at home with 7 spears in 14 cities (AI unlikely to move troops into my territory until they can no longer expand and also our country is so large that we can afford to lose a couple of cities to surprise attacks.)
They have dyes & ivory. Renegotiate peace with Americans for 80 gold!
775BC I realise Germans are pinning Aztecs down near Ivory, so we will throw everything at their capital!
490BC Our forces bear down on Tenochitlan. First wave was unsucessful. Regrouping for 2nd wave.
350BC I leave a settler undefended and a Roman warrior attacks it and disbands the workers .
We still can't ally with anyone!
330BC Barb uprising with 16 horses next to my settler! I figure my settler's dead, so I use it to lure the barbs towards Tlatelolco which has the ivory. I think the stack split into 3 to the 3 nearest equidistant cities, so minimal damage to us, but also to Aztecs.
290BC The war with Aztecs is going nowhere. I sign peace for one of his workers. Figure I'll declare again in 20 turns since production of horses is going thro the roof with expansion reaching its limit (settler production switched to military).
90BC Switch to monarchy & get peace with Romans. Still can't ally! It has been 1500 years!

hope I can finish properly in time this month to submit.

 

[cracker]

Smoking Mirror,

I want to acknowledge first that it is very good of you to post a save game for comments. I hope some of these comments will be of value to you.

Your contribution to the new graphics is so powerful that I would like to help you in any way possible to get control of the game in a way that lets you play it and enjoy it to the fullest extent. Anything that you need, please do not hesitate to ask.

I would take a different direction from Kemal’s comment about city size because in the big picture, having large cities does not equate to being more in control of the game. If anything applies here, your focus on larger spaced out cities is probably hurting you throughout the game.

I first look at you city build density and think that is one of the biggest problems you may want to address. You should look at cities in stair step increments of size with 13 squares being the big number. For most of the game, most of your cities will be size 12 or less. Even if you are shooting for a space race or UN victory, size 12 is still where you are stuck through all of the first two ages and most of the third age. If you took a screen shot of your home area with the grid turned on and then looked at the city display screens in the game you could mark all the squares that are working and producing something by using your paintshop type program and just putting a big green dot in the square. The tiles that are nearer to your capitals usually have little corruption impact so you can look at every land and water square that does not have a green dot and see that these are wasted spaces that are not contributing to your economy. If you looked at my map and compared it to your map, I have 3 or 4 more cities in the each core area than you do. My core areas with 8 cities can beat up your core areas with 4 or 5 cities.

I think you flagged this as being a problem as well, but the positioning of the FP in Tours is double whammy bad for you because it is too close to your palace in Paris plus it is too close to the inland sea that basically just takes a big bite out of any possible benefits. Your ideal locations for the palace and FP will have an inner ring of 4 or 5 cities around the palace cities and then an outer ring of 6 to 8 more cities. When you snuggle up to a coastal area or overlap too much with the radius of the other palace this really sets you back.

I also look around and see that a number of your corrupt cities have temples and libraries that you seemed to have built only 10 to 15 years (3 turns apart) this means you had to have rushed them in and this cost you money that could have been used more wisely. Tlatelolco 1360/1385, Minsk 1370/1380, Pompeii 1705/1520, Tlacopan 1275/1550, Atzcapotzalco 1535/1525, Kiev 700/860. The libraries in all these cities are producing little or no benefit to you because they are too corrupt and too far from you core areas. A number of these cities are costing you more in maintenance costs than they are producing in income or shields. This would lead me to ask you to look closely at the reasons you build certain improvements in your towns and cities and then to look closely to see if those benefits are actually there. The sequence in which you build things is important but in many cases the radius from either the palace of the FP will tell you not to build many of the choices you are making.

On the military side, I think you may have the wrong choices for this map. You have 4 armies plus some battleships and aircraft carriers. Out of the 90+ units in your military you have almost 40 of these units in things that cannot be used to seize and hold territory. In the railroad era on Pangea, you can throw down an assault railroad and reach almost any city in your enemy's territory all in one turn. Your 4 armies are all tank armies and they contain 16 of your 22 tanks and this severly handicaps your ability to defend or fight wars.

I watched the replay of your game and a number of things jumped out at me:

1) It took you until 2350 to found your second city and your capital expanded due to culture in 1990BC. This indicated to me that you built a temple in the early cycle instead of a granary or more settlers and other units. A temple in your capital is rarely a good idea because the palace gives you all the starting culture you need and settlers and units are a much higher priority. (I confirmed that you built the temple in 2710BC and this was the wrong strategy choice since it was before you built your first settler.)
2) It looked like you built the Colossus in 260AD and this would have put you half way to your golden age.
3) You went to war with the Russians about 400AD but it seemed the Americans allied with Russians and instantly starting giving you a hard time. By 550 AD you are at war with the Aztecs. The other civs are starting to beat you to the big wonders because your core area is so sparsely settled (around Paris you have two great big unsettled gaps where productive cities needed to be.)
4) You got Leonardo’s in 720AD but were tangled up in an unproductive tug of war with the Aztecs over the city of Tlaxcala that change hands 5 different times in just a few turns. This city was located right by that mountain on the western choke neck so I knew the location well. The same city changed hand 5 more times between you, the Aztecs, and the Germans.
5) You started to break out a little bit in a war against the Aztecs starting in 1200AD but still there were some seesaw city swapping battles until you wiped them out in 1340. Bet you were winning this war with knights.
6) You went to war with the Iroquois in 1585 and seemed to be allied with the Germans, English and Romans against Hiawatha which was a good move, but 3 out of the 4 cities you captured were lost back to the Iroquois and then taken by your allies instead. Germany and Rome came out as the big winners in that war.
7) In 1675 you went to war with Rome with Germany as your helper. 1730 was an ugly year when England and America seemed to join in against you and took 4 or 5 cities from you that you then captured back.

-------

I cannot tell exactly what the combat and seesaw city causes may be by just looking at the replay but something in your military strategy or tactics seems to make this too much of a negative load on your success. When you get this figured out, things will be a lot more fun.

Your replay does not show you as being in control of the game even though you were ahead in culture early and your score was in first place after the Aztec war. You were in danger of being destroyed by the Americans and English anytime they really decided to take you on.

Next time you play, try to save several strategic save games from earlier in your play. A game at between 1500 and 1000BC will reveal how well your starting strategy is matching with the civ traits and the terrain. A save game When you enter the industrial age (just before Steam Power) is very revealing. A save game right when you enter your golden age adn then one 20 turns later (when the GA ends) can be used to see if you got the best bang out of your GA to match with your gameplay objectives.

Use a text editor file to write down the tech research sequence that you use because often you will find ways to get more bang for your buck here. Your notes will be one of the only tools we can use to help you in this area.

 

[Hergrom]

Early game was expand like crazy. Settled two cities to form blockade by iron on other side of the inland sea. Settled all areas in between and down to incense on my side of the sea. All AI's were demanding things of me, even on Regent. Anyone close to me got what they asked for, civs far away were rebuffed. Finally Germany declared war. Got Aztecs, Romans & Iroquois on my side. After a few turns, Russia sneak attacked. I ransacked Russia with some help from America. Meanwhile, Gemany was beating up on my 3 allies, believe it or not.

Put my FP in Moscow with a GL. Russia eliminated. Changed focus to Germany. After a few German cities fell (former Aztec cities), Aztecs sneak attack me (what did I ever do to these guys?). So, I eliminated Aztecs. Germany continues to beat up on Romans & Iroquois. Again, I change focus to Germany. With the aid of Musketeers and a timely Golden Age, I finally eliminate them and continue the charge with the victums being Romans & Iroqouis, my former allies. Still using knights and Musketeers, I conquer all but England and America. I pause for the advent of Cavalry, and England sneak attacks me (GETTING KINDA SICK OF THIS).

With the aid of America, I shave a few cities from England and sign peace. When I actually get Cavalry, attack America, and England in succession. Both civs are relegated to a single city each on the tundra island SE of the continent. It is now like 1400 or 1500 AD. Time to milk.

Got about 5 or 6 great leaders, the first of which made an army, second was FP. The rest were assorted medieval wonders. Decided to try for a high Diplomatic score victory, but never could butter up Libby enough to do so (gave her almost every tech and over 30,000 gold to no avail). Settled for a space victory in 2050.

 

[Greg Loader]

I seem to have forgotten (again) that we were playing for the fastest win. I had a lot of fun with this game, though.

I captured/built a stream of cities (pony express) south through Germany, East through Italy, and then North by England and ended up one move away from Washington, DC where I eventually parked my 14 armies (modern armourx4/ea).

This was my first game where I bumped into the 1 army per 4 city limit!!!

One of my most unsatisfying moves in the game was signing a MPP with America. Kept me at war much more than I wanted. I hate MPPs and will remember this.

Realized in the eary 1800s we were playing for fastest, so built the spaceship before washington finished the second piece. Too bad, as I was really looking forward to walking all over her with those 14 armies!!!

Lost only 1 city to CF - Nottingham to England who had built a wonder there. The americans then came and immediately razed it.

Before the Americans could completly destroy Rome, I gave them the Island west of Germany.

Spent the last 20 turns giving away luxuries, resources, and cash, but everyone hated me for MPPing with the war mongering, civilization destroying Americans. (OK, so I may have razed a few cities, too.

Greg

 

[Zachriel]

Mon cher Napoléon

http://www.zachriel.com/gotm10/

The story of Joan D'arc told through her letters to the military leader Napoleon.

This web site is graphic intensive, typically 2-3 minutes per web page on a phone modem.
You should use a 1024x768 size screen for best viewing.

Discussion Thread
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=440240#post440240

 

[thefrenchzulu]

This is my first GOTM and like many other player I had a battle deciding on a winning strategy. Considering the options and immediately eliminating culture and diplomacy, cause they are so easy, I decided on domination/conquest. The space race option might come into play, but it is surely not my favourite winning method.

Looking at the game set-up, I had two possibilities. Either go for high score or early victory. I decided to go for the early victory, cause I could always switch to milking if needed. After reading some interesting postings surrounding milking, and considering that I've started the game on the 19 August, I started off with a very aggressive strategy.

Early expansion and a strong military should do it.

My first five cities were all built in closely. I researched pottery in 12 turns and then went for the bronze working and the wheel. I received Ceremonial Burial from the first goody hut. Great, as if I was going to build temples. I did built temples in my second and third city for culture growth. I rushed them with deforestation and started with barracks.

After the wheel I went for horseback riding and iron working. My sixth city was place such that horse came into my territory and then the horsemen started rolling from one city and spearmen from another. In Paris I went for spearmen and settlers. Careful not to over expand and fall behind in military. After Iron working, I switch my science to zero. No more research till after the GL.

I found the Aztecs first and scouted their territory with a horseman, while more horses and spearmen moved closer. Started road toward their capital cause that always helps. They also had a luxury I craved.

I took their capital in an easy attack. No losses!

They nearly immediately went for peace and donated their territory map and some communication.

To keep the other Civilization in tacked, I arranged some wars up in the East. I meant declaring war on the Iroquois. They had no cities I wanted immediately, but it would soften up the Romans and Russians. Not long and everybody was at war. Great.

One of my horsemen raiding barbarian camps in the North West killed an elite Iroquois warrior wandering around and creates my first leader. 600BC!

I immediately re-declared war and took two more cities. Got my second leader 400BC and created a one horse army. Went for immediate attack on a warrior and was victorious. Good, will build the Heroic Epic.

Peace again with the Aztechs, this time for their entire tech, world map and most of their science. Great. Rushed the Pyramids to increase expansion and cut costs on granaries.

I took the last Aztec city 300BC and they are dead. No re-spawning. What a bonus!!!

When I established embassies with all the Civilizations, I saw that the Germans have nearly completed the Great Library. I just love them for doing that. Though I would have loved building it myself, I might cause culture problems in the late game. I would also rather just take it from them. Too much knowledge can't be good for them.

I took on the Germans and with charging horsemen, got my third leader after taking Leipzig! The HE was not even finished yet. Rushed my Forbidden Palace in Cologne to decrease corruption. Received The Republic from the GL and switched immediately.


Got my fourth leader in 200AD! Rushed the Art of War. Great, those barrack will go far in my war effort.

It's currently 340AD.

I'm dominating as far as military goes. I'll have knights soon and then it should really go fast. I have a few thousand gold in stock and am on par with tech. With 30 horsemen a military victory seems just too easy, especially now that I'm moving Pike men in for denial of resource! (Why I researched iron working early) With no iron, the AI is dead!

I have to make the choice now whether to go for early victory or score and I have absolutely no idea what to do. I might go for the milking strategy just to see what its like!

 

[Smoking mirror]

Thanks for the feedback Cracker- I have to admit I'm no military genius, and when it comes to city management I'm usualy just throwing up shanty towns while I try to focus on my military shortcommings (though this ignores the fact that My military deficiency comes mainly from my bad infrastructure).
The reason for all the temples/libraries is purely for the purposes of Culture banking. I hate getting culture flipped, it realy disrupts my plans (the reason I lost so many of the Iroquis cities is cos I was tring to use my elite undersized army to defeat a bigger less advanced military force- I had no trouble actualy defeating the iroquis, but then I didn't have enough troops to garrison, so I lost some cities to culture flips, and then my allies stole them from me). The seesawing action you noticed in my wars was down to my usual military strategy (carried over from civ II) of using a small army to defeat a much larger force through letting them overextend themselves in to an area of no defensive value and then breaking the back of thier offensive army and using my (now well experienced) armies to march on their badly defended cities. Usualy it works well, but in this game there were few roads (cos the aztecs left their whole empire completely undeveloped) and I was on a similar technological level to my enemies (I hadn't wanted to be in that war, I cant remember if it was me or the russians who started that war, but the russians escalated it to include the Aztecs, Germans and Americans) and outnumbered. All my usual strategy allowed me to do was stay in control while slowly building my roads to the aztecs. Usualy I would try to get some allies in such a war, but the only bargining point I had was my stocks of resources, which i couldn't trade, because of the terrible infrastructure in the centre of the land mass.
The reason for building a Temple in my capital at the begining was because I was trying to pre build for a granary, but the tech didn't come in in time; So rather than waste the shields I had built up (or cheat by reloading) I decided to go ahead with the temple for long term culture production (double culture every 1000 years means building before 1AD is a good bonus).

As we both pointed out the site of my Forbiden palage was my biggest failure. I usualy view the FB as an overall decrease in coruption, and thus an increase in production (and trade) so I hate to wait for a GL for the opertunity to build it, I usualy try to get it built during my golden age and due to my slow progress against all the other civs in "the war to end all wars" the only place big enough to build the improvement was the city on the otherside of the lake. I was having no luck getting greatleaders (Knight Vs Knight combat in the open can result in very unpredictable combats- I.E. 50/50 chance of sucess) so I decided (in the GOTM with a game where you can't reload, every choice is loaded with ramifications) to build the FP as soon as I could.

As a final point, I guess I usualy site cities with bonus resourecs in mind, I try to place my cities to try to grab the most resources possible, as far as I'm concerned a mountain or grassland square without resources is not worth incuding in my empire- and I don't usualy bother building granaries, eventualy I usualy manage to capture the pyramids anyway and the speedgrowth bonus is practicaly worthless from the point they get to size 12, to the time you can build hospitals. Usualy I build factories and hospitals in all my core cities, but in my save game, a military emergency had postponed my modenization policy untill I had got everything under control.

 

[la fayette]

Originally posted by Zachriel
[
The story of Joan D'arc told through her letters to the military leader Napoleón.

[/SIZE] [/B]

I enjoyed very much reading your story.

Here are my 2 cents (of euro ) about spelling names:

Napoléon
Jeanne d'Arc
Vive la République

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by la fayette
I enjoyed very much reading your story.

Here are my 2 cents (of euro ) about spelling names:

Napoléon
Jeanne d'Arc
Vive la République

Fixed the Napoléon. Had some of them right and most of them wrong. I was having trouble typing the accents with my American keyboard.

Though Jeanne is more popular, Joan is her name in the game. In any case, the rule I used was Joan not Jeanne, Napoleon not Napoléon, except when in Joan's words.

Added Vive la République here:
http://www.zachriel.com/gotm10/bc0230-TheRepublic.htm

Glad you enjoyed the story. I certainly don't mind having my French grammar corrected by the Marquis de La Fayette.

http://www.zachriel.com/

 

[thefrenchzulu]

If finally decided to try the milking strategy.

It changes the whole approach to the game, especially your research. Hospitals and mass transit suddenly comes into play. My normal approach to emperor and deity is to go for really close-in highly productive size 12 cities. Now I'm looking for many size 24+ cities. A completely new approach to the game for me.

I have finished the game in real terms in 700AD. I killed the Russians and crippled the English and Americans. I find is really strange that I had absolutely no re-spawns in the game. Every time I killed, they were dead. No complaints though. A quick score calculation at this stage showed a 4050 time score bonus. Whoopee. I didn't calculate what my total score could have been, but probably not much more than 7000. It would be interesting to see the results after intensive milking.

I started my milking approach in 340AD! Though I still had to kill the Romans, Iroquois and Russians at this stage, I rushed settlers to fill all unoccupied areas with growth value. I also stopped military production and rushed aqueducts and market places. Also some temples just for initial culture growth.

It's 1000AD now and I'm flirting with the domination line. 100+ tiles to go. Problem is, America and England hates me and don't want to give that one luxury I need. Tough on England, I will have to take theirs. This will really cut it close, but that's life.

There is 325 turns to go out of the 540; I'm not even halve way! I think I'm going to raise America and England and leave some island cities for them! That should solve the luxury problems and might result in some more leaders. Need them for some wonder rushes.

I'm on about 10 000 culture points, so all temples and early libraries will have to go.

Though I'm turning technology in 4 turns, it seems as if all research will have to come from me. I had to research education, that with the Great Library. What a waist.

I still need to decide on a final winning strategy. I will probably end up with a space ship or a push for domination when needed.